Secretology of Lotus Eaters
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: Strange, dark, creepy things have been happening to Abed, not only in his dreams but in real life as well. And it all has something to do with that show he loves so much... AU, moderate action violence, black comedy, quite a great deal of darkness, Jeff/Jules limes may happen later.
1. Prologue

AN: This story will be quite dark, and quite unlike either of its source materials. I expect my fellow fans will be offended and/or disgusted by this. If not, I apologize for brightening your day.

Logic? I don't need no stinking logic! Sanity-free storytelling, that's the order of the day from me!

R&R and enjoy!

Prologue

The young man wandered through the freakishly sterile white-walled hall, which looked like the inside of an Apple product with its sleekness. Lights glared harshly down on him, doing him no wonders as he continued to question how he'd even gotten there to begin with. Wherever _there_ was. Was this a dream, or reality? He had absolutely no idea.

"Gangway! Coming through! A little help here? Someone?!" a voice yelled down the corridor. He turned around and saw a surprisingly familiar medium-sized, brown-haired young dude barreling in his direction, looking terrified beyond belief.

"Travis...?"

The dude stopped. "How do you know my...never mind that, we gotta go!" He resumed running, panting like nobody's business. In the distance, the typical sound of Nazi-ish guards, jackboots and nightsticks and all, echoed toward them. "We gotta move!" yelled Travis.

The young man panted as well as he followed Travis. Then his neck stung, like a bee had landed on the spot and pricked him. How rude.

"Oh shit!" yelled Travis, his voice becoming deeper and slower as Abed began to slowly fade out of consciousness, and his vision blacked out gradually. "They're gettinggggggguuuuuuussssssssss..."


	2. Pizza and Paintballs

Pizza and Paintballs

I enter the cafeteria and go immediately to the food counter. Not the Subway, but the actual food counter, the one that serves something other than prepackaged sandwiches. Because of the Dean's rampant political correctness, our choices are meant to reflect different regional specialties each day. Today, it's the Other Rainforest. I didn't know the Pacific Northwest had specialties. But nevertheless, there it is, in all its oddball glory. The Salmon Alfredo Pizza. Is that really a Great Northwest specialty? I have no idea. Sure sounds like it belongs up there, with its fishy quirkiness and all. It smells much more delicious than it sounds, though, so I have no problem buying a slice.

But then, as soon as I sit down with the rest of the study group, Annie asks if she can pretty please have a piece, because it's so delicious-smelling and unnaturally-good-looking. I look to Troy for help, but he's not there. Wondering how can this be, I wordlessly pass the pizza on to Annie, and I say something about everyone else being entitled to a piece of the pizza pie.

I think. Maybe they're right, and I am in fact a mentally disturbed individual. But at least I have enough humanity to react sadly, at least on the inside, when Annie puts on the big doe eyes.

Oh well. I get up from the table and leave the cafeteria, but then reenter after I remove my button-down shirt. Underneath, I'm wearing a T-shirt advertising Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I figure that adopting the walking-billboard style so popular amongst my male peers will make me marginally more invisible. Sure enough, the lady behind the food counter doesn't give me a second glance as I cough up another four dollars for a fresh slice.

Ambling aimlessly down the hall, I graze on my pizza, humming the theme to _Cougar Town_ to myself. I sure miss that show, and I'm dying to see it again. Being on Hellatus - a term I've lifted from _Supernatural _fandom - I've been finding myself plagued with weird nightmares. For instance, last night I ran into Travis as he ran through some kind of secret sci-fi lab, like the devil's hellhounds themselves were on his ass. Poor guy.

As I walk through the corridors of these surreal stomping grounds that feel more like an adult high school than anything else, I notice that the walls are splotched all over, up to head height, with paintball marks. Have they been doing another serious-business paintball war without informing me?

I take a closer look at one of the splotches, and that's when I realize it. They're all red. That's not paint. That's blood.

To make matters weirder, no more than ten feet away from me lies my unusually nice best friend, Troy. But something's very wrong with him. He's on his stomach, stirring feebly, with flecks of blood all over his sweater. I call his name, and he looks up. "Abed...?" he whispers. His eyes are gone, gouged out like the victims of that serial-killer guy from _The Following_, and his sockets contain nothing but dark clotted blood, with more leaving streaks down his face like red tears.

"Troy?" I squeak, terrified. "What happened, buddy?"

Troy shudders as he turns to face...wherever it is he must think I am. He's close, though, I'll give him that. At least he's facing me, sort of, but he's talking more to my shoulder than to my face. "There's only...one way to fix this...Abed," he wheezes. "Reclaim your...sssss..." I don't know what he's trying to say, because his voice just dissolves into a serpentine hiss as he collapses onto the floor again.

I check his pulse with the back of my finger. Thready, weak, but still there. I can still save him. But instinctively, I think that I shouldn't. Not yet. I'm gonna need lots of help.

So I leave the scene, take one more bite of my pizza to steady my nerves, and head for history class. But I'm not in much of a mood to study or learn. I'm trying to tell the rest of the group, without words, that something awful has happened. But they don't take any notice of my feeble attempts at communication. I guess the art of charades has in fact been lost.

I stare at the back of Shirley's head as the teacher drones on about something useless. How can I get the message through? I write it on a note and stick it to the abundant hair in front of me. She doesn't feel anything. What am I gonna do? My best friend has been attacked, is probably dying or even dead as I write this, and the teacher's drone is putting me to sleep...

...oh God, no. Not sleep. I'm just gonna dissolve into another nightmare again. Helllllppppppppp...


	3. Interlogue: Jules Has Needs

Jules Has Needs

Abed woke up in the midst of falling out of a big, wide open Plexiglas cylinder. He looked around and saw himself in a long hallway full of similar cylinders, except these were full of fluid. There were nine in all, each one containing a different member of the study group. Abed noticed, with a small amount of derision, that each one was floating in the fluid in their underwear, closely mimicking the one sequence from _The Empire Strikes Back_ that had always managed to set him off laughing, regardless of his current mood.

Except one. Jeff. He was completely naked, for no apparent reason. _Which is exactly the way he'd want to be, I'm sure,_ Abed thought.

A door on the other side of the room opened and Abed immediately retreated back into his own cylinder, pretending to be asleep while keeping his eyes as barely open as possible. Unexpectedly, a woman whom Abed recognized as none other than Jules Kiki Cobb walked in and approached Jeff's cylinder, made odd kissing motions against the Plexiglas.

"What about Grayson?" Abed blurted out in a hoarse whisper, unable to stop himself.

Jules turned at him with an impassive, unreadable expression on her face. "You wouldn't understand," she said. "Your kind never do." And with that, she walked up to Abed's cylinder and pressed a button, releasing a cloud of what could only be knockout gas, based on the fact that it made Abed go to sleep the second he breathed the stuff in.


End file.
